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Yirrkala & Gove
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Radio:
The special sittings have heard evidence from several people on the island village on claims by Eddie Mabo.

Mabo wants a ruling which would give him sovereign rights over the land he claims is his That would then pave the way for others on the island to stake a legal claim on their land which is handed to them traditionally by tribal right or by marriage.

This is ABC News, it's 8 o'clock... bip, bip, bip


Bailiff:
MrKapim Papim


Narrator:
The Murray Island case is only the second time in two hundred years of European settlement that indigenous Australians have tried to prove traditional property rights within common law.

In 1971, the Yirrkala people of Gove in the Northern Territory took the Australian Government and mining company Nabalco to court.

The government had licensed Nabalco to establish a bauxite mine on reserve land the Yirrkala claimed to have lived on since time immemorial.

Mr Justice Blackburn delivered a judgement against the Yirrkala. He acknowledged that the Aboriginal people had their own system of land law. But because they didn't cultivate, buy and sell, or exclude others from their land, they had no form of title vhich British common law was obliged to recognise. Nabalco soon began mining on the reserve.


Greg Mclnlyre:
In 1970 a Supreme Court judge of the Northern Territory decided that Aboriginal people did not have any customary title to their land, or, and if they did, they couldn't prove it in event.

We think that he made some errors of history, and some errors of law, and we hope that we will be able to overturn the result of that case and establish that traditional rights have come through the act of colonisation and that all Aboriginal and islander people in Australia have the right to have their traditional title recognised by the Australian judicial system.
Gove Case
Topic
1971
aborigines, Blackburn, Justice, Gove, Gove Case, Gove Peninsula, McIntyre, Greg, Nabalco, Yirrkala
Yirrkala
Topic
1976
Arnhem Land, bark petition, Blackburn, Justice, Gove, Gove Case, Kakadu National Park, Marika, Roy, Northern Territory, Yirrkala, Yolgnu, Yunupingu, Galarrwuy
Increasing Popularity Of Land Rights
Topic
1960s
Aboriginal Advancement League, Australian Labor Party, land rights, politics, Whitlam, Gough
Tent Embassy
Topic
1972
activism, Australian Labor Party, Foley, Gary, land rights, resistance, tent embassy, Whitlam, Gough
The Whitlam Government & Land Rights
Topic
1972-1975
Australian Labor Party, land rights, Whitlam, Gough
Northern Territory Land Rights Act
Topic
1975
Aboriginal Land Rights Act (Northern Territory)(1976), Australian Labor Party, Fraser, Malcolm, land rights, Northern Territory, Whitlam, Gough
The Gove Case
Topic
1967-1972
Arnhem Land, Australian Court Case, bark petition, Blackburn, Justice, Gove, Gove Case, land rights, Marika, Roy, Milirrpum v Nabalco Pty Ltd, 1971 , mining, Nabalco, Northern Territory, Yirrkala
The Gove Decision Questioned
Topic
1971
Arnhem Land, Australian Court Case, bark petition, Blackburn, Justice, Canada, Gove, Gove Case, land rights, Milirrpum v Nabalco Pty Ltd, 1971 , mining, Nabalco, Northern Territory, Yirrkala
Tent 'Embassy' defiant
Newspaper
Mar, 4, 1972
activism, Canberra, land rights, land rights, tent embassy, Whitlam, Gough